Let’s listen to just the conversation between God and Abram –

God: Don’t worry, I will shield you, and your reward will be great.

Abram: What reward will You give me, since You have not given me an heir? In fact, a servant is going to inherit everything I have.

God: No he won’t. You will father a child. In fact, come outside. Look up. Can you count the stars? No? Neither will you be able to count your offspring, there will be so many of them.

And Abram believed that the Creator of all things, the Holy One of Heaven, had just made him a promise that He would keep.

And then He made the promise even bigger.

“See this land? I’m giving it to you and to yours for always.”

“How can I be sure that I’m really going to possess this land?”

“Go get the animals.”

In the Old Testament, when two people wanted to enter into an agreement or contract, they “cut covenant”. They would cut the sacrificial animals into two halves, and then they would both walk between the pieces together, as a way of “signing a contract”.

Abram would have known what was coming next. He and God were about to “cut covenant” and it was not unfamiliar. But he didn’t know that God cuts covenant like no other.

As Abram slept, God walked alone through the pieces.

And as we were dead in our sins, Jesus hung alone on a cross.

Cutting covenant with us.

What kind of God is this who walks alone through the sacrifice to be in covenant with me?

What do I do with such goodness? How do I hold this kind of mercy? What, dear Lord, is the response that heaven is looking for from earth?

And Abram believed that the Creator of all things, the Holy One of Heaven, had just made him a promise that He would keep.

“…and He counted it to him as righteousness.”